What Should a Business Website Actually Cost?

A one-page landing site for a single offer typically starts around ₹25,000. A proper 5–15 page marketing site with a CMS runs from about ₹1,25,000. A full ecommerce build with catalogue, checkout, and payment integration starts near ₹2,50,000. A custom web application or internal tool starts around ₹4,00,000 and climbs with complexity. These are starting points, not ceilings — the real number for any specific project depends on scope, and this guide explains what actually moves it.

What determines the price of a business website?

Four things, roughly in order of how much they actually move the number: how many distinct pages or templates it needs, whether it needs a content management system a non-developer can update, whether it needs to integrate with other systems — payments, a CRM, a booking tool — and how custom the design and functionality are versus how much can reasonably use established patterns. A five-page site with a standard layout and no integrations is a fundamentally smaller project than a five-page site with a custom booking flow and CRM sync, even though "five pages" sounds identical in both descriptions — which is exactly why "how many pages" alone is a bad way to estimate a quote.

Landing page: ₹25,000 and up

A single, focused page built around one offer — no content management system, no multiple templates, usually no blog or resource section. Typical timeline is 1–2 weeks. This is the right scope for a specific campaign, a single product launch, or a business validating an offer before investing in a full site. It includes copy and design for that one offer, basic analytics and SEO setup, and typically 30 days of post-launch support. It does not include ongoing content updates without developer involvement, since there's no CMS at this tier — if you'll need to update the page content yourself regularly, that's a signal to look at the next tier up instead.

Marketing site: ₹1,25,000 and up

Five to fifteen pages, a real content management system so pages can be added and edited without a developer, a contact flow, and analytics. Typical timeline is 4–6 weeks. This is the right scope for most small-to-medium businesses that need a proper web presence — an about page, services or product pages, a blog or resources section, a contact form that actually routes somewhere monitored. It includes design and development for the full page set, CMS handover with real training on how to use it, and post-launch support. The CMS handover matters more than it sounds: a site nobody but the original developer can update becomes a liability the moment that developer becomes unavailable.

Ecommerce build: ₹2,50,000 and up

A full storefront — catalogue, checkout, payment integration, shipping integration — typically 6–10 weeks depending on catalogue size and complexity. This tier's cost is driven less by page count and more by integration complexity: payment gateway setup, shipping provider integration, inventory logic, and how the catalogue itself is structured. A straightforward catalogue with a handful of product categories and standard checkout is toward the lower end; a large, deeply categorized catalogue with variant logic (sizes, colors, bundles) and multiple payment or shipping options pushes toward the higher end. It includes the full catalogue and checkout build, payment and shipping integration, and team training on managing the store day to day.

Custom web application: ₹4,00,000 and up

An internal tool, a dashboard, or CRM/ERP-adjacent software built around your specific process rather than a template. Typical timeline is 8–16 weeks, and the range from there climbs with genuine complexity — this is the tier where "it depends on the scope" is the honest answer rather than a dodge, because the difference between a simple internal tool and a complex multi-user system with permissions and workflow logic is enormous. It includes weekly demos so you can see progress and redirect early rather than at the end, staging access to test before launch, and full handover documentation and training.

What makes the price go up?

Custom design work beyond a standard layout — genuinely bespoke visual design takes real hours that a well-executed standard layout doesn't. Integrations with systems that don't have clean APIs — connecting to a modern, well-documented API is straightforward; connecting to a legacy system with poor documentation is not, regardless of how simple the resulting feature sounds. Content that doesn't exist yet — if copy, photography, and product data all need to be created as part of the project rather than supplied, that's real additional scope, not a footnote. Scope that changes mid-project — adding features after a quote is locked is the single most common reason a project's final cost exceeds its estimate, and it's why we quote scope changes explicitly rather than absorbing them silently.

What makes the price go down, without cutting corners?

Starting with the smallest version that actually solves the problem. A landing page that validates an offer before building a full marketing site isn't a compromise — it's the more disciplined sequencing, and it's often the right call even for a business that will eventually need the bigger site. Using an established CMS rather than fully custom content architecture, when the site's content needs are genuinely standard. Supplying your own content — copy, photos, product data — rather than having it created as part of the build. Being decisive during the process — a project that goes through many rounds of open-ended revision costs more in time than one with clear, timely feedback, even at an identical final scope.

A worked example: choosing between two tiers

A services business — say, a clinic or a consultancy — is deciding between a landing page and a full marketing site. The landing page (₹25,000, 1–2 weeks) makes sense if the immediate goal is a single, specific offer: a seasonal promotion, a new service launch, a page to point ads at. It does not make sense as the permanent home for a business that needs an about page, multiple service descriptions, a team page, and a blog — cramming all of that onto what's architecturally a single-offer page produces something that reads as underbuilt, and rebuilding it properly later costs more in total than building the marketing site correctly the first time.

The marketing site (₹1,25,000, 4–6 weeks) is the right call the moment the business needs more than one real "page" of distinct content — multiple services, a team, a resources section, room to grow. The CMS is the deciding factor as much as the page count: if the business will want to add content regularly without calling a developer every time, that capability alone justifies the jump in tier.

The wrong sequencing, seen often: building the marketing site first for a business that only actually needed a landing page for its immediate goal, and separately, building a landing page for a business that needed the full site from day one and ends up rebuilding within a year. Both cost more in total than choosing the tier that actually matches the near-term goal.

How this compares to a DIY builder or a freelancer

A DIY website builder (Wix, Squarespace, and similar) can produce a serviceable landing page or simple marketing site for a fraction of these numbers, and for a genuinely simple need, that's a legitimate choice — we won't pretend otherwise. What it doesn't include: custom functionality beyond the platform's built-in features, meaningful technical SEO work, a design that doesn't visually read as "built on a template," or support when something breaks in a way the platform's own help documentation doesn't cover.

A freelancer typically prices below an agency for comparable scope, and quality varies enormously — some freelancers produce agency-quality work at a lower price because of lower overhead, and some produce work that costs more to fix later than it would have cost to build correctly the first time. The real risk with a freelancer isn't the price, it's continuity: if a solo freelancer becomes unavailable mid-project or post-launch, there's no team to pick up where they left off, which is a real risk worth pricing into the decision even when the freelancer themselves is skilled.

None of this means an agency build is automatically the right choice for every business — a genuinely simple need with a tight budget may be well served by a DIY builder, honestly. It means the comparison should account for what each option actually includes and what happens after launch, not just the sticker price on day one.

Questions that reveal a bad quote

"What exactly is included, in writing?" A quote that's just a single number with no breakdown of what it covers is a quote that can expand later without anyone agreeing to it first.

"What happens if scope changes?" A vendor who can't answer this clearly, or who implies scope changes are absorbed for free indefinitely, is either inexperienced or setting up a bait-and-switch — free absorption of scope changes isn't generous, it's a sign the initial number wasn't real.

"Do we own the code and content afterward?" If the answer is unclear, or the vendor is cagey about it, that's worth pressing on before signing anything — you should own what you pay to have built, without qualification.

"What's the realistic timeline, and what happens if you're late?" A vendor confident enough to state a real timeline, and what happens if they miss it, is generally more trustworthy than one who won't commit to either.

What's often missing from a quote, and worth asking about explicitly

Post-launch support. Does the quote include any period of support after launch, or does every bug fix become a new invoice starting day one? Hosting and domain costs. These are usually separate from the build cost but should be stated clearly, not discovered later. SEO and performance work. A beautifully designed site that nobody finds and that loads slowly on mobile isn't doing its job — confirm whether basic technical SEO and performance are part of the build or a separate line item. Analytics setup. A site with no way to measure whether it's working is a site you can't improve — confirm this is included, not assumed.

The honest bottom line

The ranges above — ₹25,000 for a landing page, ₹1,25,000 for a marketing site, ₹2,50,000 for ecommerce, ₹4,00,000 for a custom application — are real starting points, not marketing numbers designed to look attractive and expand once you're committed. The actual number for your specific project depends on the scope questions above, and a vendor who can't or won't walk through those questions clearly is a bigger red flag than any specific price.

If you want a real number for your specific situation rather than a range, talk to us about your project — we'll walk through the same questions this guide does, and tell you honestly which tier actually fits.